Bringing Out the Purple Cow in Your Business

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In order to make your business remarkable you need to ask yourself the right questions. You need to ask new questions and come up with newer answers. You need to try new ways of doing things. You are probably tired of hearing that you need to think outside of the box. Why not redesign the box so you don’t have to think outside of it at all? If you could choose your own customers who would you choose? Identify this group and then figure out how to market to them and influence their thinking. Develop your business ideas to cater to this group. Forget the rest. Focus on this group. You also need to think of clever and innovative ways to reward this group for choosing you in return. Ask your customers for their email addresses and then think of what you could send them through email that would make them feel as special as possible. Everyone loves an offer to receive 10 or 15 percent off a purchase. Everyone also likes to feel that they are in an elite group known as your most loyal and valuable customers.

The Pareto Principle (the 80:20 Rule) teaches us that it is much easier to hold onto a long-term customer than to find a new one. According to this principle, 80 percent of your business will come from 20 percent of your loyal customers. You need a combination of both. Find ways to keep surprising your customers and putting smiles on their faces! Being remarkable and standing out does not necessarily mean being the biggest or the fastest or the anything. It is about testing the limits and figuring out how much they can be pushed. It may be as simple as changing the display in your store window more often, letting your employees choose their own uniforms, launching a new brand or slashing prices. It might be doing things on a smaller scale. It may mean giving your customers more choices or being more receptive to their input. It might mean sending out a weekly or monthly newsletter or creating advertisements with larger print that are simpler to read and understand. Do your research before you burst onto the scene and seek to declare how remarkable you are. Examine the industry you are in and find out what is not taking place. What is presently absent in the industry? What does it need? Whatever is not being done is exactly what you should be doing. This will give you the edge you need to be a winner in your field. Success can only come if you do not sit on the sidelines and are not afraid to break some rules and ruffle some feathers. Your business is worth it after all.

Reinvent yourself and your business as you see fit. When you need to infuse new life into your business- any aspect of it- hire professionals who can help you do that. Your business is only as good as the people in your employ so find the best and let them help you to make your business a purple cow that stands out among the brown cows.

Image compliments http://inneke3.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/book-review-purple-cow-by-seth-godin/
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Fads come and go. Great service is paramount

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In Wednesday’s blog post we shared on the importance of having a WOW factor in your business. Today when we checked our direct messages from Twitter, we were surprised to see that there was someone who did not grasp what we were trying to convey in the post and felt we were encouraging the use of gimmicks and marketing ploys. This was not our intention, in fact we were only trying to emphasize how small businesses could stand out, using simple and time-proven techniques. You can look at the post here to decide for yourself. With that said, we’d like to reiterate a few things, for those who seemed to miss the essence of what we were trying to convey. In fact, we will break it down, bullet-style.

1- Sometimes going the extra mile and WOWing your customers makes them feel special and valued. You can gain repeated customers and business by using your creativity to craft your own WOW factor.

2- Standing out from the crowd means offering the rare treats that customers do not get anywhere else. This could be anything from offering free delivery for senior citizens to handing out candy to children that enter your store.

3- Understand that fads come and go but you need to strive for something that is different but also offers the traditional touch. For example: Not all restaurants offer old-fashioned milkshakes to their customers. Be the first one that does that. All of your customers will not want to drink soda so try to offer them something that they cannot get down the street.

In short, there are many different things you can do to show your customers that you value their business without being gimmicky or employing cheap marketing tactics. The main ones being excellent customer service, providing quality goods and services, reliability and top value for dollar. These are not fads or gimmicks by any means but professional standards that should be adhered to.

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Virtually Outsource Telephone Answering Service

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call answering servicePerhaps one of the most outsourced customer service functions at the moment is telephone answering. Big companies, especially computer companies and financial institutions, outsource their call support services to offshore call center operations. For small and medium-sized companies, a viable option is to virtually outsource telephone answering service.

Outsourcing telephone answering service is an ideal option for those who are just starting their own business and does not have enough financial resources to hire a receptionist and/or a secretary. It’s also perfect for part-time business owners who are trying to run a business while still working as an employee.

How does outsourced telephone service work? Let’s say you are just starting your appliance repair business. You can retain the services of a virtual outsourcing company and ask them to answer your business telephone for you. This way, you won’t have to suffer the incessant ringing of your mobile phone while you’re out fixing a broken water heater or air conditioning system. Other benefits of outsourcing telephone answering services include:

  • Reduced cost — Since you won’t be hiring a full time receptionist to answer your calls for you, you will save a lot in overhead expenses and labor costs. Most virtual outsourcing companies offer flat rates for their call answering services regardless of the time spent in calls or pay-as-you go payment schemes. Just choose one that suits your budget and needs.
  • Reduce customer complaints – One of the constant complaints that people have when calling customer hotlines is that are required to select too many options only to get directed to a voicemail. By virtually outsourcing your call answering service, you can eliminate this and reduce customer complaints. A virtual outsourcing company can guarantee that there will be enough people to answer calls during business hours.  You might never have to get a call from an irate customer ever again.
  • Fast customer service – Virtual outsourcing companies don’t just answer the calls, they take action. If a customer needs to be scheduled for an appointment, they will make sure that it gets entered in your calendar. If a customer needs some information, it can be given over the phone or through email if the data is not readily available.

Grenada-based Caribbean Virtual Office offers telephone answering service among other things. The company’s location makes it an ideal outsourcing solutions provider to companies based in North and South America.

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Tips for Providing Excellent Customer Service

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If you look at the most successful businesses, you will see that they have excellent customer service. So, if you want your business to succeed, you must do everything in your power to make sure that your customers are satisfied with your products, services, and after sales support. Here are some tips for providing excellent customer service.

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  1. Develop listening skills. In business, you will find that some customers don’t really have anything to complain about. All they want is someone to listen to their concerns. Instead of reacting defensively when a customer comes knocking at your office door to make a complaint, sit down and listen to the customer and see if there’s really any valid reason why he or she is complaining. There is no sense in dismissing customers who might bad mouth you to their family and friends.
  2. Be reachable. One of the major things that annoy customers nowadays is that they can’t get a person to talk to. For example, when they call a customer service hotline, they usually get a recorded message that prompts them to select several options before they can actually talk to a real person. By the time they’ve talked to someone, they’re irate already. Make sure that your customers won’t have to wait several minutes or a few days before they can get a response from you.
  3. Follow-up on customers. If you are in the service industry, it is very important that you have policy for following up with your customers. For example, if you recently did a kitchen renovation, call the client a few days after you have finished the job and see how they are doing with the new kitchen. This kind of follow-up will work for businesses providing services as well as those selling big ticket items. You can also do follow-up via e-mail.
  4. Find out the satisfaction level of your customers. An ideal way of finding your company’s customer satisfaction rating is to conduct a customer satisfaction survey. In many restaurants, it is considered routine for the chefs and the servers to inquire patrons about their dining experience during the meal itself or after collecting the payment. If you have access to the email address of your customers, you can also request them to answer customer satisfaction surveys online.

    Providing excellent customer service is must. Explore all customer service options at your disposal and see what works best for your kind of business.

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    How to Outsource Your Customer Service

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    Outsourcing customer service is one of the most contentious issues among businesses in the U.S. today. On one corner, we have bottom line-conscious companies that are after the savings they will make by outsourcing customer support to cheap labor countries. On the other corner we have nationalistic business owners who prefer to make the financial sacrifice needed in order to make sure that their countrymen have jobs.

    caribbean outsourcing
    Somewhere in the middle of these two opposing points are businesspeople that are only after quality customer service. As many businessmen say, your profit is only as good your customer service. If you offer lousy customer service, whether outsourced or not, then your business is doomed. To prevent this from happening, we’re giving you a brief guide to virtually outsourcing your customer service.

    • Choose companies with customer service agents fluent in English. Call the company’ hotline and see if their receptionist speaks good English. If they do, then the rest of the staff probably speaks the same way. Here’s a great tip: select companies from countries that are near the US because their English, even their accent, is understandable and acceptable to US clients. Check out companies based in the Caribbean, like Caribbean Virtual Office.
    • Try their support first. Inquire about the other companies being served by your potential hire. Call the customer service hotlines of those companies and experience their customer service. Be as difficult as you can be to see how the customer service agents will respond to challenging situations.
    • Consider providing customer support by email only. Big IT firms like Facebook and Yahoo outsource their email customer support to cheap labor countries. The language barrier is effectively dealt with and no customer will come complaining about the heavy accent of the customer service agent.
    • Continuously train customer service agents. In order to make sure that your clients are satisfied with the support that you are providing, you need to train the customer agents on all the products and services that your company provides. This is especially true for new products and services because these would inevitably draw questions from your existing and potential customers.
    • Adapt quality assurance measures. Constant monitoring and review of customer calls is one way to find out if quality customer service is being delivered to your customers. Randomly select and record calls and see for yourself whether the performance of the agent is satisfactory. You can also call your own customer service and act like a customer to see for yourself how your customer service agents deal with customers.

    Outsourcing your customer service can do wonder for your bottom line and your customer satisfaction rating. Just make sure that you outsource your customer service to the best company.

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